The real source of behaviour

Question asked on Quora today: Why is it a natural human instinct the more money you make the more you will spend?

Gus Griffin’s reply: Sorry, but this isn’t a “natural human instinct”. An instinct is a response or reaction shared by all members of a species.

It may be a common inclination, but it’s clearly not universal. I’d guess that the instinct which usually actuates spendthrift behaviour is our instinctive desire for gratification. But this would be outweighed by some other instinctive desire—like for security, for instance—in people who don’t behave as you describe.

Human behaviour patterns are generated when contending instinctive desires come into play, like simple elements making up complex molecules. Of all the hundreds or thousands of patterns you can detect in the conduct of human beings, almost all of them can be explained in terms of the interplay of just fifteen simple native reactions.

The proof of this claim is—at Instinx.com—when we show a person how to “tune up” or “tune down” one of these simplest of responses, their inefficiencies or bad habits then instantly improve for all time.